


Midsummer on Hoth

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: AU - Hoth setting, Bodhi deserves a hug, Bodhi reflecting on his survival and acts of remembrance minor as well as major, Bodhi-Centric, Everybody Lives, Feels, Gen, but are there at exactly the right time, doing exactly the right thing, in which the Guardians don't need to say a word, minor appearances by the rest of the team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 07:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19268656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Bodhi Rook's thoughts about Hoth, and his survival, are coloured every day by memories of his home.





	Midsummer on Hoth

**Author's Note:**

> Although this is Bodhi-centric and it's Bodhi week this week in Celebrate Rogue One 2019, this doesn't fit any of the prompts. But it is almost midsummer's day; so here's a story about that.

There isn’t much to like about Hoth, for a man raised in a desert.  Jedha wasn’t hot, it’s true, but it was nowhere near this cold even in the depths of winter, and snow was a rarity; except in the mountains there simply wasn’t enough atmospheric moisture for precipitation of any kind.  He actively dislikes the ice tunnels, and the weeklong storms when a single glance outside reveals an environment apparently collapsing endlessly inward from above in constant, whirling snow.

But still, it’s a solid planetary base after almost two years of “home” meaning one ship or another, and floors that quiver perpetually with the faint engine-pulse everyone says is undetectable, but which Bodhi feels nonetheless.

His own internal quivering has faded almost to nothing now, though it took a long time to get there.  His hands and his mind are steady, on firm ground at last.

Hoth is firm ground too, a glacier thousands of feet thick underfoot, a core of frozen iron-bearing rock that nothing can shake.  At first a reflexive kick-back of fear had him expecting to have nightmares again about the Death Star, because the last time he stood on a planet’s surface he was seeing that grim-white moon shape looming above, knowing he had only minutes of life left and if he didn’t fly now, every one of the souls that had dragged themselves back into Rogue One’s dirty hold would perish alongside him.  He saved twelve lives, and has learned to focus on that and not on the hundreds more he couldn’t reach in time. 

He had to do it consciously at first, until he became habituated.  But Bodhi is nothing if not determined.  He will appreciate every single thing there is to find good about this place.  The simple pleasures of living planet-side at last; breathable air, albeit hell-cold; open skies, with thick white cloud or with swathes of broad icy blue; vast star-fields at night that only move with the turning of the world.  Even a lunar cycle. 

That’s something new to him; Jedha was a moon itself, with no natural satellite of its own.  But the passing of the moon-phases means months, and seasons.  In time it will means years.  In time, in his ongoing life, in all the lives here.

He looks back occasionally on the weeks that brought him to the Alliance; the strange numbing shock of being trusted with the worst truth a man could carry, the constant frantic fear that dogged him as he dragged himself on from one day to the next.  His conviction that there would never be an end to it, never a single moment of settled time to rest, even to say a single prayer, much less plan for a future, a life, a hope.

The friend who’d trusted him with the hope of all was dead, but now – several miracles and a year of therapy later – here he was, alive and on Hoth, with time. 

“Believe it or not” says Snibb Nubasc one evening as they bring their patrol craft in to the hangar at the end of their run “it’s the middle of summer today.”

“Who told you that?” Bodhi blinks at his co-pilot. “Hilarious.”

“Yeah, right?” 

It hasn’t snowed at all today, though, and the cold isn’t _very_ much past bearing, though the sky is clear.  Looking out past the other ships coming in to land Bodhi can see brilliant stars as the sky grows darker, and the moon is rising, almost full again. 

Suddenly out of the next fissure in the glacier comes a huge cloud of ice-bats, grey-blue wings and grey-brown, and golden eyes.  They wheel about, circling over the landing strip before heading off into the night in search of midges and snow beetles. 

Even in the Galaxy’s most bitter-cold summer here it is; the dizzying reality, the tenacity, the ever-returning vibrancy of life. 

He grins at the Sullustan. “Happy Midsummer, then, my friend.”

Midsummer; he remembers suddenly how his sisters would put out chairs on the roof for the few brief weeks the weather was truly hot, and rig up a sun-awning.  Mother making fruit cordials for sherbet.  Friends coming round to play tric-trac and chat in the sunset.  Days that were long enough for leisure and pleasure after work, and mild enough that everyone wanted to relax.  It wasn’t a major celebration like Midwinter, it was a time not so much for religious devotion as for cramming in; life and frivolity, board games and love and resting in the sun, as much of all of it as one could possibly manage, all packed into those weeks.  The warm season on Jedha had been good, and beautiful, and very short.

He aches, and tears come, and walking away down the passage he lets them fall for a moment, and then dries them, as he does most days. 

The middle of summer.  Is it midsummer’s day today, in the ruins of his homeworld?  He’ll taste no young wine, though; and no-one is bringing excitable buffaloes up from the south to the Longest Day market, or grapes, or the fragrant bluecurrants.

How he used to cram himself with bluecurrants… 

The best way to give tribute to the dead is to remember them and love them, and work to do good for their sake.  Everyone always said so, from Ma up, and if he goes to the Guardians he knows they’ll tell him the same.  And Bodhi knows he’s already doing everything he can; fighting, flying, training others.  He’s committed to the day he dies, to the path Galen Erso set him on, that he chooses again, every morning, and reaffirms every night.

Of course, the day he dies might very well be tomorrow.  All the more reason then, to enjoy the tiny blessings of today; the memories both bittersweet and beautiful, the co-pilot friend, the midsummer moon.  There won’t be any sherbet, and no-one would want to sit outside on the roof tonight.  But he’ll remember with love, and cram in life with gratitude, for however many days he’s allowed. 

He turns to go in the door of the mess hall, and sees Chirrut and Baze on the far side; Baze with a huge knife, shaving ice off a block the size of his own torso and tipping it into beakers, and Chirrut blithely filling them up with fruit-coloured liquid from a bottle.  K-2, of all the unexpected sights, is assisting them, handing cups out to random ground crew and pilots with a studiedly casual air. 

To think he’d thought the Guardians wouldn’t bother with something so secular as Midsummer and a bit of sherbet.

A companionable hand brushes his shoulder and Cassian says “We were just watching them, wondering what this is all about.” Bodhi looks round at the Captain, and Jyn, half-smiling at him and then at Cassian. 

“Is it someone’s life day?” she says. “Fancy juice.”

“It’s a Jedhan thing.” He puts an arm round each of them. “To relax at the end of the day.  Come and have a taste.  Did _you_ know it’s midsummer on Hoth?”

They’re both scoffing in disbelief as he leads them towards the table, and the shared drinks, and all of their friends.


End file.
